Mother 3: When is Piracy Justified?

[Mangetout]

However, producers are going to be tempted to take measures to prevent people less upstanding than yourself from reproducing it or keeping it after having sold it - and these measures might interfere with your ability to do what you want with it.

[erislover]

@Lemur866

Of course you can’t just look at the incremental cost of manufacturing a copy. Otherwise the cost of anything that can be represented digitally would be essentially zero.

Exactly the problem. But I don’t understand why you suppose “essentially zero” somehow invalidates looking at the incremental cost. eta: maybe you aren’t implying this, it just reads like it

But we all know that the cost is not zero, since people had to sweat to create that string of numbers that your computer can copy effortlessly.

No one has disputed the total cost is zero. The fair market price should be, as you discovered, “essentially zero.” If it is not, then we have a problem.

But tying such compensation to copying is no longer very useful.

Suppose there were some website where all of us who loved Madonna could donate cash to a fund that would go towards the production of her next album. When she felt there was enough cash, she’d make a new album, then distribute it at the price where marginal revenue equals the marginal cost of (re)production. (“Essentially zero.”) If she never felt there was enough cash, she never got any of it. We could pull our money back at any time. (I just came up with this off the top of my head. There’s problems with it, I know.)

Now we have a new invention, or a couple of inventions. Computers and digital media and the internet. And now, the cost of copying a digital work is near zero. The cost of distributing a digital work is near zero. Of course, the cost of creating that work hasn’t changed much.

This cost should have only mattered in the decision, “Should I be an author or a plumber?”

And so our current scheme of compensating creators for their work is now unworkable. In order for creators to continue to be compensated for their work we MUST find another method, the alternative isn’t that we keep our current system, the alternative is that creators will get no compensation at all.

Perhaps. Perhaps they’ve never needed to find a way to utilize their skills in a way that society will willingly pay for without altering the economic environment through favorable legislation. (If automakers do it, it’s rotten protectionism from special interests. If record companies do it, it is “moral.” Go figure.)

I have no idea what the new system should be, all I know is that the methods that succeeded in the industrial age are failing miserably in the internet age.

I agree. I also have no idea how to move forward.

[erislover]

@erislover

No one has disputed the total cost is zero.

Suggested. Suggested the total cost is zero. No one has disputed your point. Love how the brain works sometimes. :rolleyes:

[E-Sabbath]

@Mangetout

However, producers are going to be tempted to take measures to prevent people less upstanding than yourself from reproducing it or keeping it after having sold it - and these measures might interfere with your ability to do what you want with it.

And if they break the principle of first sale in said manner, I have every right to break their measures. I may also tell people how I broke their measures. If they play games with me, I can play them right back. If Sony wants a rootkit on their CDs, breaking my computer because they are afraid I may make MP3s out of their CDs, then I have every right to be as pissy as possible back. That, as I’m sure you realize, was a declaration of war on their customers.

Sins of a Solar Empire was sold without copy protection. It sold very well.

Amazon’s music store sells unencumbered MP3s.

Companies learn if you whack 'em on the nose hard enough.

[Mangetout]

Sure, but companies aren’t the only ones capable of making the first wrong move. Unprotected content does get abused (although arguably, so does protected content, only not so casually). Customers are also capable of escalating the condition to the status of war.

As I said, I sympathise with both sides - the consumer, quite rightly, wants unencumbered use. The producer, quite rightly, doesn’t want people getting the fruits of his labour for nothing.

[E-Sabbath]

Entirely correct.